The Environmental Protection Agency was poised last spring to tell millions
of Americans that their homes might contain an insulation contaminated with
asbestos, according to a news report this week in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
However, the White House intervened and stopped the announcement several days
before it was to happen.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch broke the story after acquiring nine boxes
of internal documents from the Environmental Protection Agency under the Freedom
of Information Act. The documents indicate that the agency had put together
an education campaign that included press releases warning of the potential
contamination and a list of governors and politicians to notify before the White
House's Office of Budget and Management stepped in and stopped the announcement.

The potential asbestos contamination lies within a particular type of insulation
called Zonolite made with vermiculite, nearly all of which was mined between
the 1940s and 1990s in Libby, Montana. Three years ago, an investigation by
the Seattle Post-Intelligencer revealed that vermiculite at Libby contained
small amounts of the amphibole mineral tremolite, a type of asbestos. Nearly
200 asbestos-related deaths have occurred in Libby over the past 40 years. W.R.
Grace and Co., which last owned the Libby mines, declared bankruptcy under financial
pressure from suits related to asbestos illnesses. The Environmental Protection
Agency has made the Libby mine site a Superfund site.

Although no vermiculite has been mined from Libby for the past decade, the
internal documents revealed that asbestos-tainted vermiculite from Libby mines
may reside in the 15 to 30 million homes in the United States built with Zonolite.

Neither White House nor Environmental Protection Agency officials have publicly
announced why they did not to issue the warning.

The severity of the potential contamination is not clear. Some geologists and
health experts think tremolite is a particularly dangerous form of asbestos
when it is in the air. The tiny fibers can get lodged in the lungs and lead
to cancer. However, asbestos is not a threat when it remains locked in materials
such as insulation, and W.R. Grace and Co. claims that its Zonolite presents
no health risks. Ironically, efforts to remove asbestos contaminated insulation
can actually increase the chances of illness by forcing asbestos fibers out
of the insulation and into the air.